


gilded butterfly

by demjinyves



Category: GOT7
Genre: Cheating, F/M, Heavy Angst, It's not what you think, POV First Person, always first person pov, fuck y/n
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 10:56:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20007172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demjinyves/pseuds/demjinyves
Summary: Here’s what they don’t tell you about being cheated on: nothing can ever be the same.





	gilded butterfly

**Author's Note:**

> I just started reposting this from tumblr and I'm already sick of reading it

Living together is hard. Everyone has told us and told us and told us. It is hard and it is compromise and it will be hard to compromise.

And we laughed at them all together as we sat on the floor of our new apartment. It wasn’t an extravagant place with a great view or special furnishings of any kind. No, nothing like that between two college kids, one already working retail and the other teaching dance. As it was, I was getting ready to start grad school following the summer we moved in. Honestly, we’re hardly kids anymore.

It was a new building, quite bare actually, with cool white tiles we’d have to take turns cleaning once a week, and we could see into the room of the building next to us in its ugly rust red bricks. For the money, it was all we could afford between my meager salaries and his at the studio.

But it was ours, and I remember how we made fun of everyone who warned us about living together as we drank coffee from the shop downstairs we’d forgotten and let go cold. Just the two of us on the cool smooth floor of our new place. I remember the way he smiled at me, like this was everything he wanted even if only for that moment. I knew it well then when I thought I knew better than anyone how much he loves me.

How much I love him.

With everything we had between us, we loved each other then. With all the boxes of our clothes, our unwrapped mattress and used furniture we’d spend days cleaning and arranging, trying to find space for. With the taste of bitter coffee still on his lips. With the two of us sleeping on one mattress on the floor that first night.

I knew how much we loved each other. I know because he told me.

Im Jaebum was the most honest man I’d come to know. He was the kind of person who would tell you straight out what he thought of you, why he didn’t like something, why he did. He was most honest when it came to himself, even to a fault, and he was perhaps the harshest to himself. He was honorable in that sense too, always striving to better himself, to work hard to become the kind of man he wanted to be.

Maybe that’s why I have such a hard time believing that he was cheating on me.

Is this the kind of man he wanted to be? Someone who lies to his girlfriend? Who can so easily come home to me after being with a girl who isn’t me?

I didn’t want to believe it. No one ever does. But I so badly wanted to think I didn’t see him with her. I didn’t see her face because his back was turned to me. But god, I’d know him anywhere.

My earrings he always put on with his, the jacket with his studio’s logo printed in bold black block letters. His newly dyed hair. How could I ever miss Jaebum?

How could Jaebum miss me?

What struck me first wasn’t the fact that he was kissing that girl, in the middle of campus where I never thought to see him. It was that he wasn’t even aware that I was only a few feet away. Well, that is, before I took off in the opposite direction.

I think I wanted to feel heartbroken. Scream, burst into tears, hit things, break things, just get it over with. Then I could confront him. I would go right up to him, rip him out of her arms, and punch him in the face. I’d make a scene. I’d make him wish he never left me in the back of his mind.

“Im Jaebum, we are through!”

“Pack your shit and get the hell out!”

“I never want to see you again!”

So why couldn’t I do it? Why didn’t any of it sound real even when I tried to picture it in my mind?

Because he deserved it. I wouldn’t feel guilty doing it. I owed it to myself, to be strong and to assert myself, to hurt him for hurting me. He didn’t get to embarrass me like this, kissing his secret woman right where I went to school and worked, of all places. I have the right to embarrass him, blow up in his face like the psycho girlfriend I’d be made out to be. I have the right to take back my dignity.

Didn’t I?

I just couldn’t stop asking myself why. 

Why couldn’t I feel anything after I literally caught my boyfriend kissing a girl who wasn’t me in broad daylight, with no shame or fear of me possibly seeing them? Doesn’t it hurt? If he’s kissing her with so little regard to discretion, who knows how far they’d gone into the relationship? Shouldn’t I be seething with rage instead of drowning myself in questions and sinking deeper into shock?

What’s there to be shocked about anymore? I saw it with my own eyes, it’s not rocket science. I was being cheated on. I was being cheated on and I needed to decide what to do before I fell deeper into this whirlwind of pain I didn’t need.

Why did I feel cold and not angry or sad or devastated or—

I didn’t know how to feel. That was it. I didn’t know what to feel or what to think even as I was trying so hard to be able to do both. I couldn’t even wrap my head around it, no matter how fresh it is still in my mind that this man I loved had cheated on me.

_Had been cheating on me_ , that bitterly cruel voice in my head whispered, _who knows for how long._

And suddenly, I felt so stupid, stupid and paranoid now. How long has he been lying to me? When did he first start coming home later than usual, saying he had gone out with the guys or needed to stay at the studio to clean up or that his parents had called him out too suddenly or—

It began to hurt. The more I wondered and thought about it, the more I felt it consume me. The disgust I felt in my stomach and the ache in my chest, the weight of knowing that he could still be with her right now and the weight of knowing absolutely nothing about it were so heavy.

Jaebum kissed me this morning before leaving for the studio. And now he’s kissing her.

I felt like I was being crushed under it. The more I think about it, every moment that I’m not with him, not knowing if he was with her, trying to discern which bits of his lies were truths or excuses from now since-since—

God, from the moment I met him? Is that what this will come to?

I try to think back to a time when we were happy and even that makes me sick to my stomach. Aren’t we happy? Isn’t he happy with me? What could I have done to make him stray? Someone so honest and so strict to his own morals, who never had to swear that he wouldn’t lie to me because he wouldn’t lie to anyone.

But all along, I was a fool. I was such an idiot. I let this happen to me.

As my phone vibrated loudly in my purse, I let out a short yelp, the thick silence of my anxiety finally heard through my echoing thoughts.

_‘Hey, let’s grab lunch! You’re on break now, right?’_

I let out a bitter breath of laughter, mirthless as I stared down at the glowing screen. Mocking me. Taunting me.

No one knew about this yet. Absolutely no one. In fact, I doubt Jaebum would even find out if I never say anything about it. He’s never once looked guilty, never let on that I had a reason to doubt his fidelity to me. I bet he thought I would never find out.

Not until now.

I refuse to let myself wallow like this, in self-pity and self-doubt, trying to lick wounds that he gave me.

I stared down at my phone with growing contempt, but a newfound determination.

If I were to do anything, I’d need to think fast. I decided then, tapping a quick answer, that if he was ever to answer for this I wanted to make sure he suffered as he tried to. If I let this happen to me, then I was none the wiser. But I would be damned if I let it continue.

I wouldn’t just cut him out, clean and easy, for him. He didn’t deserve that.

If he wanted to cheat, then fine. Let him cheat. But by the time I cut Im Jaebum out of my life, I will leave him with his heart in his hands and nothing but the realization of his mistake to comfort him.

_‘Sure, meet in the office? We need to talk.’_

**Author's Note:**

> yell at me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/feraljackson) or [tumblr](https://yves-saintlaurwang.tumblr.com/) if you want, it's free!


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